An impressive array of yachts lines up again in Porto Cervo on 5-10 September 2011 for the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup and Mini Maxi Rolex World Championship.

In a "who's who" entry list of competitive big boat sailing Future Fibres features prominently. Interestingly, one third of the combined Maxi/ Mini Maxi fleets still have rod lateral rigging but exactly one third of the fleet (15 of the 45 boats) carry full sets of Future Fibres composite rigging. This figure jumps to approximately two thirds of the fleet when you include partial sets of fore & aft rigging.

The list of Future Fibres cables demonstrates the full cross section of fibres and composite rigging technologies available:

Kevlar® and PBO running aft rigging
Dyneema® forestay strops
PBO and Thermoset Solid Carbon (TSC) bobstays
PBO and Kevlar® code and top-down torsional cables
Full sets of PBO lateral rigging
TSC diagonals combined with PBO verticals
Full sets of TSC laterals
The latest FlexCTM carbon aft rigging

This variety reflects over a decade of rigging development and evolution.

Composite rigging has clearly proven itself as a reliable, high performance product. With the emergence in the fleet this year of a 2nd generation of composite rigging, the technology is clearly maturing. It will be interesting to see over the coming 2-3 years how many boats in this fleet remain with rod rigging.

Any composite rigging questions, please contact our sales or service teams: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it